I think this might be one of those photos that doesn't translate well as a small jpg on a computer monitor, but looks great blown up on a printed paper. The sky looks a little strange, but in a good way. Almost a backward vignette.. definitely looks like a place I wouldn't want to be banished.

Thank you for the comments everyone! I tried a reverse vignette on this, and while interesting, I'm not quite sure I'll be doing too much of this processing in the future.

I'm sitting here kicking myself for not checking to see if there was blue-green algae growing under the alkali surface. Wouldn't that be something if there were life in such a radical and harsh environment?